Who won the 2025 African Cup of Nations depends on who you ask. On the pitch, Senegal. On paper, Morocco – the football tournament’s host. But beyond the disputed result, AFCON has revealed a story of how a host country managed its image – and who it pushed out of sight to do so.
Late last year, Morocco forcibly displaced hundreds of Black migrants as it prepared to welcome more than 600,000 tourists for AFCON. While such operations are not uncommon in the country, the Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH) told openDemocracy that there was a significant spike ahead of the tournament.
Displacements often “intensify” when the world’s eyes are on Morocco for international sports tournaments, diplomatic summits, or big cultural festivals, according to AMDH president Souad Brahma.
“Migrants are removed not only from public view but from areas linked to onward travel to Europe” as Morocco tries to present itself as a reliable EU security partner, Brahma told openDemocracy.
The EU and its member states have channelled more than €2bn to Morocco for so-called “migration management” over the past decade, including for border control and security measures. This funding, Brahma said, has positioned Morocco as the “gendarme of Europe”.
There are between 25,000 and 40,000 so-called irregular migrants in Morocco at any given time, the Interior Ministry estimates. The majority are from West Africa and have fled repression, conflict, extreme poverty, and climate crises – and many hope to travel on to Europe.
The Moroccan government reported intercepting 73,640 irregular migration attempts to Europe in 2025. The impact of this was most visible in Spain, which is only 13 kilometres from Morocco at its closest point; irregular arrivals fell by 42.6% last year to 36,775 people, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.
Morocco primarily displaces migrants through internal pushback. The authorities use buses to move people away from key departure corridors to Europe, such as the country’s Mediterranean coastline and its south Atlantic coast, before dropping them in remote towns in central or southern Morocco.
There, they are left to fend for themselves, with no accommodation or support provided, according to a 2024 investigation by Lighthouse Reports, which aligns with the AMDH’s findings.
Dialo is a 40-year-old Congolese man who has been living in Morocco for 15 years. He previously held a legal residence permit, but this has since expired, and he has struggled to renew it due to reforms to the process that require migrants to submit legally binding lease agreements and work contracts, both of which are often hard for those working in the informal economy to obtain.
He recounts a terrifying ordeal in 2022. “I went to visit a sick friend in Takadoum, and two men forcibly took me to the local authority’s office. I had all my papers, but no one listened.”
After seven hours in custody, he and others were loaded onto a bus, their phones confiscated, and wristbands placed on them. Hours later, they were dumped near Khénifra with no money, no water, and nothing else.
Another 44-year-old Congolese man living in the capital city of Rabat, who spoke to openDemocracy on the condition of anonymity, confirms the constant threat. Like Dialo, he has struggled to renew his expired residency card amid the heightened requirements. “I’ve been displaced three times, sometimes for hours by bus toward Agadir or Beni Mellal. If you pay the authorities €20-30, they might let you go. It has become a profitable business.”
The forced relocations are carried out without any due process and target Black migrants, the AMDH has found, including those with valid residency cards, such as international students or refugees under the protection of the UNHCR. Other demographics do not receive similar treatment.
“These operations are coordinated by multiple public forces,” Brahma said, “the National Security, the Royal Gendarmerie, the Auxiliary Forces; they perform raids on urban neighbourhoods and informal migrant camps.”
The consequences of these expulsions – and of the journeys that follow – can be fatal.
Amid harsh weather conditions on 11 March, local authorities discovered four bodies, believed to be migrants, near a town on Morocco’s eastern border with Algeria. Three months earlier, extreme cold killed nine people near the Moroccan-Algerian border in the Ras Asfour area, according to human rights sources cited in Hespress, a national news publication.
The European Union did not respond to openDemocracy’s request for comment.
'The anger was overwhelming’
AFCON brought visitors to Morocco from competing nations, as well as the US, the UK and France, which the government credited with boosting the economy by more than €1.5bn.
Ahead of the tournament, the AMDH’s Rabat branch recorded the removal of one to two hundred migrants every day. The forced relocations stopped around three weeks before the first game, which the association suggested was to avoid international scrutiny.
Migrants were “pushed far from major cities, from airport corridors, from tourist zones,” Brahma said. “The aim is to avoid projecting the image of a Morocco that violates migrants’ rights.”
Far from ending after the tournament finished on 18 January, the relocations and deportations intensified in the weeks after the match, says Rabii Sadere, a member of AMDH’s Asylum and Migration Committee.
The final in January saw clashes erupt on the pitch and between Senegal and Morocco’s fans. While Senegal secured a 1-0 victory on the day, the Confederation of African Football controversially overturned its win last month, retrospectively declaring Morocco the winner due to a 17-minute walk-off by Senegalese players in protest at a disallowed goal and a VAR decision. Senegal has appealed the ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an international body headquartered in Switzerland.
After the game, the dispute continued online, with racist posts, comments and videos circulating on Moroccan social media. These were often amplified through a hashtag calling for the “deportation of Africans”. While Morocco is also an African country, it has historically culturally identified as Arab and is indigenously Amazigh.
“We all wanted to win, Moroccan and Senegalese, but after the match, the anger was overwhelming,” a 29-year-old Senegalese resident of Casablanca, who is living in Morocco legally, told openDemocracy.
The tensions surrounding the football tournament echoed those shaping the country’s migration policy. Last month, around a hundred migrants were rounded up daily and expelled from northern Moroccan provinces, according to a report in Hespress and Sadere’s analysis of local news reports. Local media reported that the Moroccan authorities said the expulsions came in response to complaints from residents about violence and theft by migrant people.
In the Casablanca neighbourhoods of Derb Sultan and Derb El Kebir, security forces reportedly arrested 43 migrant people following clashes involving stone-throwing, causing injuries and material damage.
“The tensions of one match cannot erase decades of shared history. Morocco and Senegal are bound by deep, enduring ties,” said Bounna Saar, a Senegalese resident of Casablanca.
Still, though, the experiences in AFCON have raised concerns about how migrants in the country will be treated in the run-up to the 2030 World Cup, which Morocco is co-hosting with Spain and Portugal. “I fear a tightening of security policies, for example, the introduction of a specialised electronic visa, and an increase in security restrictions regarding the movement of migrants in an irregular situation,” said Sadere.
Neither the Moroccan authorities nor the Confederation of African Football, which runs the African Cup of Nations, responded to openDemocracy’s request for comment.
___________
Our reporter in Morroco has chosen to be anonymous for safety reasons. They said, "Reporting on this topic for international media can put me at risk, especially given the current climate for journalists in Morocco."
Renée Boskaljon is a Dutch independent journalist who specialises in EU migration policy and Moroccan society. She has written for The Guardian, The New Humanitarian, Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Dutch media outlets. She is based between Spain, Morocco and The Netherlands.
